How do libertarians feel about unions?

Libertarians think about unions the way they think about most social organizations: that they should not be banned, nor subsidized by the government.  There's nothing wrong with people banding together to sell their labor, just as there is nothing wrong with pooling capital to create or invest in firms.

Libertarians have problems with laws about unions, such as ones that require firms to negotiate with a union that is designated by the state as the agent of the "bargaining unit." Libertarians oppose both laws banning contracts with individuals that prohibit union membership and ones that mandate a "closed shop" or "agency shop."  If a union has the market power to negotiate a situation like that, then more power to it!  Libertarians don't support "right to work" laws, as a result.  An exception may be for public employment, especially where one is hired after a civil service examination.  The union didn't get you the job.  Public employment is not a free market situation.  Having a monopoly provider of a service with a monopoly supplier of an input (labor) is a recipe for busting the budget.  Once public employees were allowed the right to strike that employees in the private sector had won, wage and especially benefits costs for public employees exploded, to the extant that in the US overburdened units of government have been declaring bankruptcy.

Libertarians would mitigate this by privatizing many government functions and contracting with private firms to provide tax-funded services where practical.

Libertarians may feel inimical to unions, or, more properly, union leadership, because it so often retains its historical propensity to support statist, especially state socialist political solutions to social problems.  There is a cultural clash between a lot of libertarians and people in the labor movement.  They don't understand each other well.  Walter Reuther of the UAW once cracked in the 1980s, when Reagan appointees were a majority on the US National Labor Relations Board, that labor might be better off if the structure of regulatory legislation were repealed, and labor would be free to use tools it had been forced to give up when laws like the Wagner Act were passed, like the secondary boycott. Libertarians would agree with that. The state organs regulating the unions can be captured by labor or by big business.  If the latter, then labor has a complaint against the government.  If labor does it, the employers have a beef.  Frequently, the independent laborer is restricted by the actions of the state on behalf of either or both groups, which libertarians dislike.

Read other related questions on Quora:

• How do libertarians feel about quarantining people?
• How do libertarians feel about being labeled as conservatives?
• How do libertarians feel about multiculturalism?

Read more answers on Quora.

from Quora http://ift.tt/1X0nWSZ